On Friday, Governor Spencer J. Cox (R-UT) took to X, formerly known as Twitter, to boast that he had “solved the homelessness crisis,” planning to forcibly detain unhoused people in a facility in Salt Lake City.
“In times of confusion, I turn to the Bible to tell me what to do. They exiled their undesireables in leper colonies to clease them of their vices, and so will we!” Cox Xeeted. “They made the decision to get addicted to drugs and alcohol. Addiction is the modern-day leprosy. If we purge it out of them they can rejoin society. Why should we use our own tax money to reward their immoral behavior?”
The governor’s announcement has sparked a broader discussion about rehabilitation and solving the homelessness crisis.
Dawn Charleston, resident expert on addiction weighed in on the topic. “This is absolutely the wrong way to go about it,” she said. “We already know that supporting unhoused people by giving them access to a stable place to live is the key to solving this crisis. It isn’t ‘rewarding’ their behavior, it’s treating them with basic human dignity. More than anything, it is important that rehabilitation is a choice someone should make of their own free will. Forcing someone to quit cold turkey and speedrunning recovery is only imposing a puritanical view of rehabilitation and will only cause more problems.”
"Annelise" walked out of the sea thirty years ago and they have looked back multiple times since! When he is not writing and editing satire, she enjoys arts and crafts and taking long strolls on the MC Escher stairs.
